“Smiter of the High and Mighty”

More problems for the reactionary old farts on the governing board of COLSTON GIRLS SCHOOL emerge. Having decided last year to maintain the “toxic” Colston brand for the school, claiming “Colston’s Girls’ School is directly descended from Colston’s Hospital, a school which opened in 1710 for ‘100 poor boys'”, new research suggests this is a load of OLD BOLLOCKS.

A paper by the Bristol Radical History Group finds that a girls school for Bristol was in fact strongly RESISTED by wealthy Colston cultists, the Merchant Venturers, in the late 19th Century. Until a girls’ school was forced upon them by a Liberal central government threatening to REMOVE their charitable endowments and use the money to set up the school themselves.

The main man behind setting up Colston Girls School, therefore, wasn’t the reactionary mass murderer Colston and his Merchant fan club but a liberal education reformer, JOSHUA FITCH. Demands are now being made that idiot school governors ditch their fake history founding myth immediately and acknowledge the truth.

Confronted by such a FARCE of ANAL pomp and circumstance on the TV and in the papers, you might think that the people of the UK are being manipulated and made to dance around like puppets. But are your fellow citizens really as stupid to be taken in by such a bunch of irrelevant non-entities, as the deluge of reports across the ‘liberal’/conservative media appears to indicate?

First of all, it’s important to keep in mind that the ‘royals’ are the most crucial symbol for the power of the ruling class in this country. They keep the whole structure of CLASS RULE and the remaining TATTERS of the so-called ‘British Empire’ going. Yes they are indeed a bunch of irrelevant non-entities, but for the landowners, corporate billionaires and financiers of the 1% to keep their power masked, it’s essential for the sycophantic media to pump out the kind of REACTIONARY DRIVEL you read in The Nazi Post, The Mail and all other outlets, turning it into not only justification for this royal waste of money, but also to perpetuate AT ALL COSTS the myth about how subservient and ‘loyal’ we, their alleged ‘subjects’, are.

Hence the clever pandering to ‘identity politics’, which has so successfully diverted the majority of the left away from the politics of class. A little smoke and mirrors around the bride being of mixed race and an alleged ‘feminist’ seems to fit the bill; a bit of window dressing supposed to make the RULING CLASS look okay again. Only it won’t work, because the onward march of MONOPOLY CAPITAL will continue regardless, disenfranchising you, taking away your rights, stripping away your chance of a secure home, depriving you of the last scraps of the 1940s ‘new deal’, making you redundant and accelerating your descent into poverty. And ONE DAY SOON, even the most duped of you will wake up feeling VERY ANGRY.

Okay… now for a reality check, away from the media’s grovelling before wealth, power and ‘celebrity’. Across our city of Bristol last Saturday, a team from The BRISTOLIANtravelled from place to place and found there was NEXT TO ZERO interest in the ‘royal wedding’. They saw a mere TWO rather PATHETIC attempts at putting up bunting with NO celebrations of any kind, and instead everyone was either hanging out in the parks or watching the footie.

The appointment of North Somerset Council boss, Mike “BILLIE JEAN” Jackson, as Executive Director: Resources and Head of Paid Service on £165k a year at Bristol City Council continues the merry-go-round of big wages, changing job titles and eye-watering pay-offs for poor performance at the top of the council.

This leadership farrago really gathered steam in the summer of 2012 when the Bradford Sun Queen, Chief Executive Jan Ormondroyd on a cool £190k a year, JUMPED SHIP after trying and failing to rig the outcome of the Town Green application at Ashton Vale in favour off Bristol City FC. The Sun Queen “TOOK EARLY RETIREMENT”, scooping a £50k pay-out as the door slammed on her way out.

In the autumn of 2012 Mayor Old Fool arrived in the hot seat and immediately decided that the big problem with the top job at Bristol City Council was its NAME! So the great leader scrapped the Chief Executive post and introduced a CITY DIRECTOR instead.

Step forward Nicola “Lady Gaga” Yates who swanned into this new role from Hull in 2013 scooping a generous £192k a year through various salary enhancements we weren’t told about. By 2016, she had departed IN DISGRACE with a £200k pay-out when a £30million hole emerged in the council’s budget.

Now, with the Reverend was at the helm, he decided the problem was, er … the JOB TITLE! So, in early 2017, he appointed Anna “Big Wedge” Klonowski as Chief Executive on £160k a year. SIX MONTHS later she departed with a controversial £70k pay off, currently being investigated by the council’s auditors.

This brings us to new boy “Whacko” Jackson. He arrives with yet another NEW JOB TITLE and the usual bollocks from the mayor and his patsy HR Committee of councillors insisting we must pay top dollar to get the skills they need. Although which of Ormondroyd, Yates and Klonowski was in any way a success or value for money?

£320k in SIX YEARS spent on pay-offs o council top bosses? That’s over £50k every year just to get rid of the last liability

All was not well in the department of endless lies and cover-ups run by Bristol City Council housing boss GILLIAN “Irma Grese” DOUGLAS after our last issue.

We hear Ms Grese was less than pleased at our REVELATION that her department was slyly signing off eviction threats to homeless families who had fallen behind on a dodgy service charges demanded by Grese’s favoured landlord for the city’s most vulnerable – Connolly & Callaghan (Bristolian 40).

We’re reliably informed that an especially sour-faced Grese marched long suffering managers and supervisors into a meeting room and began waving a copy of The BRISTOLIAN above her head while screeching, “THERE’S BEEN A LEAK, THERE’S BEEN A LEAK.”

The scene, we’re assured, was “completely and utterly hilarious and it was hard to keep a straight face as this ludicrous Scottish banshee whined her dismal song of the thoroughly EXPOSED.”

Using that tried and tested scam of changing the name of something that’s hugely unpopular, back in 1971 the government changed the name of the Windscale nuclear power plant to Sellafield after a series of major safety scandals had shaken public faith in the safety of the plant.

Now, the Reverend Rees, not being one to pass up the chance of repeating a DAFT IDEA, has come up with his own name changing scam. Knowing full well anything called ‘CONGESTION CHARGE’ would unleash a torrent of unpopularity and be an instant kiss of electoral death, the Reverend in March unveiled some new options to improve air quality in the city – ‘Improving Public Health – A Clean Air Plan for Bristol’.

And – can you believe it? – four out of the five options on the table involve introducing an, er, CONGESTION CHARGE of some kind! The Reverend even wheeled out his youthful and rather dim Cabinet member for Energy, Waste and Regulatory Services Kye “The” Dudd to explain why this congestion charge wasn’t a congestion charge. “It’s to address a public health matter rather than a war on motorists,” blustered the tyro politician before CLAIMING this not-a-war-on-motorists congestion charge would save 300 lives a year.

Not entirely true as these 300 hundred deaths a year are not REAL deaths but STATISTICAL deaths calculated at a desk by consultants using complex equations. Indeed, The Dudd’s own consultants admit the deaths from this public health crisis are “UNCERTAIN” due to “RISK COEFFICIENTS“.

Statistically uncertain deaths in Bristol could therefore be as low as 101 per year or as high as 612. WHO KNOWS? Not the Dudd, that’s for sure, as he bandies around that figure of 300 deaths to unleash a congestion charge on unsuspecting Bristolians.

If the Dudd was serious about reducing pollution rather than raising revenue then he would, in fact, be leaving motorists alone and getting his middle class mates to ditch their poncy WOODBURNERS. According to the British Medical Journal these must-have heating systems for the well-heeled urban twat are producing over TWICE as many harmful emissions as road traffic!

More bad news for Avonmouth residents as another POLLUTING PLANT appears at the Port of Bristol overnight without planning permission and, apparently, with the support of compliant government regulators and Bristol City Council.

A temporary CONCRETE BATCHING PLANT and manufacturing facility at Avonmouth, which will be used to make concrete segments to form the water intake tunnels for the new Chinese funded nuclear power station at Hinckley Point, is up for retrospective approval by a Bristol City Council planning committee in May. As usual in Avonmouth, it appears the plant has ALREADY been built by contractors HANSON and is ready to start production.

Despite potential RISKS from nearby sites with HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCE consents, the council is likely to wave the application through claiming any problems can be overcome by monitoring the site during construction (which, conveniently, has already happened!)

Locals are said to be less than impressed with this latest example of the council’s CAVALIER APPROACH to their wellbeing. The Reverend Rees even made a PR friendly visit to the Merchant Venturer-run Port just last month where DEVELOPMENT ISSUES and POLLUTION weren’t even mentioned by the Reverend or his entourage as they posed for photos for the press.

Instead the mayor played CHEERLEADER for the Port’s apprenticeship scheme and generally brown-nosed the management of the Port for providing employment. Concerns of residents and locals did not feature.

This latest cosy planning arrangement between Bristol City Council, the Port of Bristol and MULTINATIONAL POLLUTERS comes just a few months after the Day Group won an appeal with the Planning Inspectorate to run a poisonous waste processing plant on Port land without any planning permission.

Welcome to the latest regulatory failure and corporate stitch up of Avonmouth residents.

What the fuck is going on with the Bristol Labour Party Members Group on Facebook? You may recall that back in November material from this private Labour members-only Facebook page appeared on the Operation Black Vote website plastered with the headline ‘LABOUR PARTY MUST EXPEL BRISTOL’S RACIST MEMBERS’ under the byline of the Reverend’s good friend Simon Woolley “Wanker”.

That episode had all the characteristics of a shameless attempt by the Reverend and his small gang of desperate right wing Labour supporters to TARGET Corbynites in his local party and get them expelled from the party on trumped up charges of racism. Alas, the whole POORLY EXECUTED PLOT collapsed when a large majority of the local Labour Party and the city at large piped up and effectively told Rees to stop being a prick.

However, the Reverend and his supporters still seem unhealthily obsessed with this Facebook group. Now we learn that Labour members unknown have granted the city council’s HR Department FULL ACCESS to this Facebook page so that they can try to target any members of their staff who happen to be in the Labour Party and supporting Corbyn.

The city council’s HR honchos, not being ones to pass up a golden opportunity to create a MONUMENTAL FUCK-UP, have, we’re told, even gone to the expense of procuring a private company to do their dubious spying for them and start disciplining staff for, er, being in the Labour Party!

All slightly odd, as being a member of the Labour Party is not usually a disciplinary offence. Since when have teachers, social workers and street cleaners been BANNED from being in the LABOUR PARTY? Indeed our friend with a copy of Butterworths Employment Law Handbook (25th edition) assures us such disciplinary actions have “LITTLE PROSPECT OF SUCCESS“. Not least for obstructing council staff’s Article 11 rights under the Human Rights Act to Freedom of Assembly.

But perhaps the bigger question is why is the Reverend handing large sums of PUBLIC MONEY and resources to a private sector firm to target his opponents in the Labour Party? Is this a lawful use of public money?

Bristol Community Links, otherwise known as Day Centres, have recently been at the centre of some of Mayor Marvin’s cuts. Its manager, Sonia Moore, faced with quite a budget shortfall chose to make cuts to the centres’ transport and also, er, increase the number of highly paid managers in her department. Because that is just what a service making cuts needs – more managers.

But what about the transport? How are some of Bristol’s most disabled and complex adults, living at home with mum and dad, going to get to their day centres? Well, Sonia decided to decommission the transport (a dozen or so minibuses and a handful of cars) and replace this transport with alleged spare capacity in the (privatised) special needs school minibus service*. The theory was, once the school minibus had taken the kids to school they would then go off and pick up the punters and take them to the day centres. Likewise with going home in the afternoon. The council would then be able to halve the number of vehicles it hired and halve the drivers it needed. So, as long as you didn’t mind being picked up an hour and a half later, it is business as usual.

So far, so good. But unfortunately, not all has gone well. Here are the highlights:

* New hours inconvenient to you? Tough, says Sonia. You can bring your loved ones in yourself if you don’t like it. Some of those parent / carers with jobs have had to do so. Others have decided to keep their kids at home more and struggle on. Several families faced with this have given in, a further blow struck against people whose lives are dominated by care-giving.

* The new ‘service’ suddenly refused to continue to take people to respite care homes, which meant that parents could no longer got a rest from permanent care. For people with family members who have complex needs this is the only chance they can ever have to take a holiday. Instead of going away for a few days to rest and recuperate the parents have to stay behind and deliver their kids to the day centre each day. Something really important was lost here: care for the whole family, not just the disabled person.

* Some parents complained, other parents suffered in silence. The ones who complained were provided with transport, the others who didn’t complain are still picking up their children.

* Sometimes the transport picks up people from respite care and leaves behind those whose parents haven’t complained, even though there are spare seats. This, I feel, is one of the more brutal failures on the list. Managers know what the right thing to do is but are deliberately refusing to do it.

* Some people have been left behind because of clerical cock-ups. Requests to the new company to pick up regulars have been met with refusals. More than my job’s worth, mate! Health and safety, not insured, and other excuses that have never, ever been used in the history of social services.

*Sonia hasn’t made it clear that all the transport will be discontinued in 12 months. She says she has told them, but the parents have no idea at all. The news was buried in a letter and the word ‘reviewed’ conflated with the notion of a social worker coming round and having a bit of a chat over a cup of tea and a jammy dodger. It is an open secret amongmanagers, politicians and contractors that it will all be gone in 12 months.

*One of the minibus companies hired is rumoured to be the one that left that Downs Syndrome child alone on the bus for six hours outside one of Bristol’s schools, mere weeks ago, remember that?

Some of you may have heard that a number of lay members of our underperforming Parish Committee are complaining that their private posts on the St-Jeremy-the-Hapless-Incompetent’s Facebook Group have been passed to Mr Walsh from Leeds, my interim Head of People Solutioning. Mr Walsh is an excellent appointment and his personal service company, Bootfill HR Solutions, is performing valuable work on agile process transformation for the parish at his competitive market rate.

It is therefore unfortunate if certain members of the Parish Committee have used private and confidential Facebook pages to describe the brilliant Mr Walsh as a “greedy Tory bastard” or “a useless cretin in a dreadful suit with all the intellect of a small hedgehog” or “that gross piece of incompetent right wing shit”.

Mr Walsh is now in possession of all this material – and more – and he is perfectly within his rights to take action against lay members of the Parish Committee who have clearly defamed his good name and expensive suits. If any lay members of the underperforming Parish Committee are not happy about any of this, then I suggest they take it up with St-Jeremy-the-Hapless-Incompetent’s Parish Committee who, apparently, released the material to Mr Walsh. I should add there’s no point in going to the police about this because Mr McCourt from Kettering, who I keep on a retainer to provide expensive legal advice to Ms Daya, our Head of Canon Law, says this type of stolen material is not a concern for the police and you would be totally wasting their time.

Finally, while I am a member of the St-Jeremy-the-Hapless-Incompetent’s Facebook Group myself, I would like to assure everyone I have no idea how Mr Walsh might have obtained this confidential material about lay members of the Parish Committee that I can’t stand the sight of and would like to see dismissed. As my mentor, the Texan psychotic preacher and notorious anti-communist homophobe, the Pastor Righteous Loon says, “a happy coincidence is the Lord working in mysterious ways”! And that’s my last comment on the matter. Good luck Mr Walsh!

March’s snow event was an opportunity to roll out our the parish’s business continuity plans with myself and Mr Slocombe acting as joint Gold Leaders. Aside from the church car park being an inaccessible ice rink for three days and the unfortunate incident where Mrs Oldfellow, one of our fine parish seniors, broke both her hips, our plans ran smoothly. The parish leadership team, currently led by Ms Jensen from Birmingham our Head of Virtue working as acting Head of Agile in accordance with Mr Slocombe’s excellent new parish leadership rota system, is calling on everyone to reflect on what we’ve learned and review and update business continuity plans accordingly.

What wonderful advice. I shall be reflecting hard and, maybe, we should all reflect a little more and be less rude about expert parish leaders going about making their business making a simple living don’t you think? Until next time, god bless most of you.